In addition to the natural growth form of the apple tree, there are bush, half-stem and standard trees as grafted stem forms. Aside from smaller espalier, columnar, and spindle trees, the semi-stem tree is the most common in home and commercial horticulture today.

Mediocrity can also be perfect

The landscape used to be dominated by tall crowns of apple trees with standard trunks, as they kept space free for agricultural work in the fields in between. Today, however, apples are increasingly only grown in specialized companies and in private gardens. Here, the effort involved in harvesting and general care should be as low as possible. An apple tree with a half trunk usually forms a tree crown with a maximum height of four to six meters. This means that work with the ladder can still be managed during regular tree pruning and the majority of the fruit can also be harvested from the ground. Interestingly, even weaker-growing apple trees usually bear more apples than their taller relatives with standard stems, calculated in terms of their total size.

Possible uses for a half trunk apple tree

An apple tree with a half trunk offers various advantages due to its manageable dimensions. For example, several different apple varieties can be planted in smaller gardens, which not only enables a staggered harvest, but also mutual pollination of the trees. Half trunks can also be used to create a trellis on the apple tree, where the crown of the tree is raised as a narrow wall along tension wires.

Even grafting a half stem from an apple seedling

With a little patience and luck, you can also grow an apple tree from a core yourself. On this seedling you need to remove all side branches after about three years to maintain a suitable grafting base with a straight trunk. You can then graft a suitable scion onto this at a height of about 80 to 120 centimeters in order to obtain an apple tree with a half trunk. For the graft you need the following things:

  • a tree as a base
  • scions
  • a sharp knife
  • a clean scissors
  • binding bast
  • wound closure wax

tips and tricks

Basically, one speaks of a half trunk when the treetop is about 80 to 120 centimeters high. Lower specimens are called bushes, while trees with higher branches are called standard trees.

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Trees